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THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
A TRIBUTE 



But r o thou ttrf way till Ih* r t>A br : 

iorlbuuthaIlrrU.il. thy lot 

it th* r - Uyu 

DANI1 I XII 



THEODORE 
ROOSEVELT 

A TRIBUTE BY 
WILLIAM HARD 




PORTLAND MAINE 

THOMAS BIRD MOSHER 

MDCCCCXIX 



M 









r AM permitted the publication of one 
of the most beautiful things written, 
or likely to be written, concerning 
Theodore Roosevelt. This Tribute, 
first printed in The New Republic for 
January 25, 1919, under the title 
Roosevelt Now, to me, is one of the 
finer flowers of farewell. It possesses 
an underlying emotional quality, a 
restrained fervor, unapproached by any 
one who has as yet appraised this great 
leader, not of a Party only but of all 
Americans in the living Present. 

" He was of those whose words can shake 

And riddle, to the very core 

The falsities that Time will break." 

T. B. M. 



A FTER this it was noised abroad 
that Mr, Valiant-for-truth was 
taken with a summons, by the same 
post as the other, and had this for a 
token that the summons was true : 
44 That his pitcher was broken at the 
fountain." When he understood it, he 
called for his friends and told them of 
it. Then said he, I am going to my 
fathers, and though with great diffi- 
culty I am got hither, yet now I do not 
repent me of all the trouble I have been 
at to arrive where I am. My sword I 
give to him that shall succeed me in my 
pilgrimage, and my courage and skill 
to him that can get it. My marks 
and scars I carry with me, to be a wit- 
ness for me that I have fought His 
battles who now will be my rewarder. 
When the day that he must go hence 
was come, many accompanied him to 
the river-side, into which as he went 



hfl M ith, where ii thy sting ?" 

Ani nt I ieeper, he 

-. where "So 

he pivwi r-. .ind all the trumpets 
led for him on the other 

NYAN 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

October 27, 1858 
January 6, 1919 



Lrl ui bcilrvr tL»t In thr rfWott o< th* 

MMdfaf world he hrird thr prnt »a.ti 

g oa 4 farther thorr. lad fell 

. upon hit wi»lrd brow the breath 

a* the eternal marninf . 





THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

HE words and ways of 
the time are gone for 
him. He spoke them 
and he trod them. But 
what was timeless in him was what 
we loved in him. 

He was life's lover and life's scorner. 
He explored it forever and he was 
forever ready to leave it. He was 
not simply life's energy. He was not 
simply, beyond any other living man, 
life's eternal forthright force. He was 



the ml curiosity of it and the 

it and the find- 
ing of Kreat ma I the per- 
petual a nt oi it and its laughter. 
i k thing in it, but its N 

it aside. Was death tear 
ful ? ^ n tearful? He s< 

it and dared it to its instant v. 
When 1 .'.. he b<>- 

When he hunted, he hu 
with hardship. The delving of death, 
the enduring of pain, the living with 

\d with bad HU i the 

h earin g well And the <-*ing 

well, or .1 as possible it 

joy. 1 k iid not make life an 
Life for him was nothing I ngs 

beyond, openings to effort and ch. 
and to the joy of effort and B, ioy 

:ig. 



So to be with him was not simply 
to live more strivingly. It was to live 
more abundantly, A primrose by the 
river's brim became a prodigious epi- 
sode in the migration of flowers. A 
shy child coming into the room became 
a romp and a riot. A dusty book 
chanced on in the garret became a 
gigantic pitiless controversy among 
scholars past and present and to be. 
A dead phrase became a political 
missile. There it lay. There it had 
always lain. Roosevelt stumbled on it, 
looked at it, roared, picked it up, hurled 
it at the right mark and exploded it 
into fame. Everything became some- 
thing else. There ceased to be any 
such thing as the commonplace. 
There ceased to be any such thing as 
a solid jungle of plodding fact. Every 



turn was now, with him, a turn into 

.1:.. He made I 

Roosevelt the most interesting thing 
in the worlj. He seemed to do so. 
But when one had gone away from 
him one found that what he kid n 
done was to make the world itself 
momentarily immortally interesting. 
He was the prism through which the 
light of day took on more colors than 
J be seen in anybody else's com- 
pany. Hfan 1 ~<\n remember, and him 

carry with me in remembr.r 
But with him are buried a mil 
gleaming patterns and pageants I now 
shall never 

1 U was instinctive cner. i he 

was creative curiosity; and he went on 
then to his greatest greatness. This 
insatiable taster oi life never fell into 



the heresy which damns the taster* 
He knew there were poisons. He set 
them down from his lips. And he 
knew the pit in which even the inno- 
cent but indiscriminate thirst of all life 
and of all sensation becomes a poison- 
ous quicksand* He leaped over it. 
He might have been the greatest 
dilettante of his day. He might have 
been, in mind and in body, its greatest 
dandy. He might have been the most 
promiscuous absorber of its offerings. 
He became the most girded pursuer 
of its activities. He girt himself with 
choices and denials. The heresy of 
self-expression as an end. the heresy 
of self-development as an end. he met 
and conquered. Having perceived 
what things make life run on in joy 
forever, even when the joy of the 



runner is gone, he chotC tuch things. 
Thtngs different he left, 1 
them, but he left than. He h. 

genius for the whole of life, but he 
in even greater for the v.-' 

With him one seemed to r 
the world without limit and yet to 
return without soil. To be sop' 

i to the very verge of the ultimate 
human abyss and yet to be as clean 
as a detfl animal th. nost 

extraordinary achievement and his 
:-dinary legacy in the pos- 
sibilities of the art of living. He '. 
and lie lived abundantly, he lived ex 
uberantly, with all his universality, 
within submissions. He submit!, 
the continuing life of the individua' 
of the family and of what is grv 
than the family. And to that 



thing he gave his supreme submission* 
He gave it to the greatest cause he 
could perceive. He gave it to America. 
It compelled him in his young years 
from the labors of the naturalist to the 
labors of the public man. It furnished 
him with the one doctrine of his last 
years* Those last years were* if sad- 
ness could ever have touched him. sad. 
They were lonely. But they were 
lofty. They were his greatest. They 
were not his greatest intellectually or 
temperamentally. But. beyond com- 
pare, they were his greatest morally. 
In political detail he remained indeed 
within the pettiness of politics, more 
so than ever, but in political devotion 
to what he thought to be essential 
public moral doctrine he went farther 
than he had ever before gone, out of 



the p -npletely into the patriot 

.uiJ so into the pr 

Remonstrances came upon him 
floodingly. He was so full and so 
open about armies *\nd navies an j 
With Germany. If he would only 
abridge, if he would only abate, he 

Id so much better advance his | 
and advance himself. He replied with 
fury. Never by abridgment or a: 
ment would he b dent again. 

I he tariff he might have idofl 
or might liave refused to reform, by 
circumstance:;. I fere was a thing 

inces. That Anv 
should be ready to strike at need 
that every American should be It 
to lose himself in the stroke — on those 
terms, and on those terms only, was 
he interested m campaigns. He 



10 



preached universal liability to national 
survival* He was preaching personal 
character* No submission, no charac- 
ter. No limitless loyalty, no man- 
hood. No loss of self into America, 
no self. No life militant and at risk, 
no life triumphant and at joy. 

Loyalties may change. Submis- 
sions may shift. Nations may give. 
way to industries and to groupings of 
industries. Quarrels between govern- 
ments may vanish and be replaced 
by quarrels between syndicates and 
between classes. National armies 
and fleets may melt into the armies 
and fleets of the bourgeoisie and of the 
proletariat. The red soldiers of Lenin 
may be succeeded by the green or 
purple soldiers of a greater and a more 
thorough than Lenin. Yet will the 

n 



meaning of Roosevelt be there. W 
will his virtues be essentia. kind 

if mankind is not to be the stagnant 

little v 
whirlwind of autocratic or demoCJ 

■mmunistic or anarchistic or 
eugCOk adventure Yet will the 

common man raise himself to self- 
or perish in his personality 
.\nd in his sons and daughters. Yd 
will the causes die which end in self- 
expression and 

the pre. s of not dying. Net 

will the causes live and triumph which 
elicit from their followers the submis- 
sion Roosevelt gave to ; I must 
still dare to count not unworthy, I 
in tl : great causes — t: 
of these new hills and these new 
valleys on which we try 



anew the experiment of a society to 
transfuse and to transcend the indubi- 
table material struggle of class by the 
indubitable mystical claim of humanity 
— the cause of America. 

So he himself still lives. He lives, 
I may hope, to believe that he did not 
give its full proper place to the struggle 
of class. He lives, I may hope, to see 
that patriotism by itself is sacrilegious 
because it rends the body of Christ 
and tears His seamless coat. I may 
hope. But plainly I see him striding 
on and beating the mist back with 
swinging elbows; and in the space 
beyond is the gravity of Washington 
and the fierceness of Jackson and the 
melancholy of Lincoln and all the 
riches of men in which we Americans 
are already so rich ; and he turns his 



13 



heid on hJi ihouldcrj tod be looks 
.j I cam l heat him s^v 

:. hoar the thing that 
mark and the symbol <>f bJ 
ing : I cau hear the click of teeth with 
which 1 elf to all 6t 

of things in himself th. 

ill conquest in himself of things 
beyond; and I can hear him laugh. 
And to the gravity of Washington 
he fierceness of Jackson and the 
melancholy of Lincoln 1 I .: the 

time of Roosevelt. 




'T v HOU'RT dead of dying, and art made divine; 
■*■ Nor need'st thou fear to change or life or will ; 

Wherefore my soul well-nigh doth envy thine. 
Fortune and time across thy threshold still 

Shall dare not pass, the which mid us below 

Bring doubtful joyance blent with certain ill. 
Clouds are there none to dim for thee Heaven's glow ; 

The measured hours compel not thee at all ; 

Chance or necessity thou canst not know. 
Thy splendour wanes not when our night doth fall, 

Nor waxes with day's light however clear, 

Nor when our suns the season's warmth recall. 

MICHAEL ANGELO 

'{Translated by J. A. Symonds.) 



W ' \ 



FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES OF 

THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN PRINTED ON 

VAN GELDER HAND-MADE PAPER FOR 

THOMAS BIRD MOSHER 

PORTLAND MAINE 

MDCCCCXDC 































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